By: Bharani Padmanabha, November, 2014
Most patients assume that physicians protect the patient’s interest come what may. In the US sadly that isn’t realistic, though that standard lasted longer here than elsewhere as physicians were independent, professionally and economically, and did not need outside referrals to treat patients.
In Germany and Austria in the 1930s-40s, physicians quietly complied in the routine murder of their patients on a daily basis. There were always exceptions – physicians who did not feel a great need to belong to some group – such as the “disruptive” Dr. Hans Creutzfeldt who saved almost all his patients from routine murder in hospitals. In 1959 he even unmasked murderous psychiatrist Dr. Werner Heyde’s second career as Dr. Fritz Sawade. We never ever celebrate the “disruptive” Dr. Creutzfeldt because that would cast a light on the rest. If he could, the rest could have too.
Dr. Mengele’s family supported him till 1979 with the rationalization that he had carried out Dr. Verschuer’s experiments at Auschwitz only because his boss, Dr. Verschuer, had said he would retain his job in Berlin if he quietly complied without being “disruptive.” The vast majority of physicians now employ the same rationale to justify their quiet compliance. The job and salary are always more important than the patient.
In forward-leaning progressive Russia, physicians worked for the government and quietly complied. Psychiatry as a field existed solely to silence truth-tellers, and murder dissidents. The few physicians who put their patients first were thrown out of medicine and into prison. The trial of Dr. Mikhail Stern is the only one we have full details for because his sons smuggled a cassette recorder into court.
When NYPD wanted whistleblower Adrian Schoolcraft thrown into a locked ward to crush him, Jamaica Hospital psychiatrist Dr. Isak Isakov displayed no professional independence and quietly complied without being “disruptive.” He imprisoned Schoolcraft until the NYPD itself approved the release. Smooth teamwork.
Patrolman Schoolcraft had two tape recorders recording NYPD Chiefs kidnapping him from his bedroom. NYPD found one and stole it. Happily, the second survived. Schoolcraft can be heard asking – “What is this, Russia?”
In Massachusetts, we cannot tape even our own kidnapping thanks to the progressive pro-corruption statute, euphemistically referred to as the Wiretapping Statute. Had Carmen Segarra worked at the Boston Fed instead of the New York Fed, she would be in prison now.
Complaining about massive neglect of patients is “disruptive.” When I was an Intern at the Boston VAMC the nurses had left an old veteran patient sitting in his urine and stool for 8 hours. The Intern in charge of that patient responded with an order – “Please do not let patients sit in their urine and stool for more than 4 hours.” He was denounced as “disruptive” and threatened with banishment from medicine.
Last year, the Brockton VAMC fired a “disruptive” physician for complaining that a patient had been in the psych ward for 8 years without ever being seen by a psychiatrist. The “disruptive” physician was the only one fired.
There has been a huge effort to ensure quiet compliance by physicians even in the private sector, through relentless denunciations by Harvard’s Dr. Lucian Leape and his progressive comrade Sir Donald Berwick against “disruptive behavior.”
Complaining about Medicare fraud is “disruptive.” Reporting major errors by the hospital’s leadership is “disruptive.” Physicians who do are denounced as mentally ill and reported to the State Board. Just as in progressive Russia.
The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, run by political appointees and government doctors with a vested interest in quietly complying, is wholly incapable of standing up for the common people and has proved this repeatedly by serving exclusively as the hospitals’ handmaiden. The Massachusetts Board has even ignored the attempted murder of a patient by Dr. Leape’s Cambridge Hospital.
The atmosphere engendered in the US by Harvard’s Dr. Leape and Sir Donald, of quiet compliance under threat of denunciation as “disruptive,” led directly to young Justina Pelletier being locked up in Children’s Hospital for 11 long months for no real medical reason.
Think of all those quietly compliant Harvard students, residents, fellows, tenured professors and progressive Child Psychiatrists who walked past her everyday (2013-14) and said nothing, thus avoiding being denounced as “disruptive.” The only folks inside Children’s who helped were the parents of other children in the ward who couriered messages in and out, Samizdat-style, just as in progressive Russia.
The ONLY physician who spoke up for the child, the “disruptive” Dr. Mark Korson, was driven out of medicine last month while still in his 40s. A clear example for the others, just as in progressive Russia.
Academic tenure with guaranteed pensions is undeniably insufficient to stiffen the spine when the very real threat of persecution and exile, through the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine under color of law, FORCES physicians to violate the Hippocratic Oath.
That is the true worth of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine.
Protecting patients is very “disruptive.” A whole generation of Harvard students and residents shall quietly comply for life, having learnt to not be “disruptive.” What a resounding success for Leape’s Lysenkoist denunciation of “disruptive behavior.” The Nazis and the Soviets fully approve.
Bharani Padmanabhan MD PhD is a neurologist and specializes in Multiple Sclerosis in the Boston area. scleroplex@gmail.com